Toxin
by oh-mother-of-darkness
Summary: Damian ft fear toxin


The valley was full of bones— piles of them, thousands, thrown in heaps across the snowdrifts— and Damian stood above them, braced against the wind. He knew they weren't real. He knew.

He was still terrified. That's how it worked.

 _Hallucinating. You're hallucinating._ He could still hear noise around him— his father yelling his name, police sirens, footsteps on concrete— but it was muted, garbled, like he was half-asleep and falling deeper. _It's just the fear toxin. You're fine._

Damian turned away from the valley, back towards the spires of Nanda Parbat. His breath puffed out in front of him, fast and shallow. His heart was beating too quickly. _Just the toxin._ The sirens were fading underneath the mountain wind and a strange, slow rattling behind him. Damian turned to look.

The bones were moving, falling out of their piles and knitting together. He saw full hands rake through the snow and reach toward him, trailing ragged zealots' robes and broken blades—skulls chattering as they fused with vertebrae, limbs, legs. They rose, fully-formed, and began to climb the mountain, hissing his name. He stumbled away from the edge.

"Damian!" It was his father's voice, and in the moment, Damian forgot that it was real—outside the hallucination. He spun desperately, but the mountaintop was empty.

No. His father couldn't be here. There were too many bones. The entire valley shook beneath their weight, and Damian knew that he put them there, he _knew._ He didn't want his father to see.

"Damian!"

Damian ran, past the gates and into the city, through hallways lined with doors that rippled into wall as he passed. He was lost before he turned the first corner. It was like a nightmare— the corridors shook while he ran, changing, twisting, trailing into infinity. He couldn't find the end. He skidded to a stop outside a door he recognized: his bedroom.

There was blood seeping through the doorframe, pooling across the stone floor. Damian kept running.

The hallways turned darker, rougher. Underground, Damian thought— he was under the mountain. He stumbled into a cave where the light flickered green.

Damian stood on a ledge while the Pit bubbled beneath him. A figure burst through the surface— not his grandfather, but Todd— while wild laughter echoed off the walls. His eyes were glowing; he smiled at Damian, ghoulish, as the waters dripped from his outstretched hands. A swarm of bats swept from behind Damian's back, and he fell, off the ledge and into the open air.

 _Just the toxin. It's just the toxin._ Damian's heart was pounding—he could feel it in his chest, his neck, his fingertips. There was a blur of red underneath him, and instead of stone, he hit something soft and warm. Goliath. They flew out of the cave, through an arch, and into the sky.

It was quieter up there— just the beat of Goliath's wings and an ocean spread out beneath them. Damian buried his face in Goliath's fur, gasping, half sobbing. He closed his eyes, and for a few seconds, he could hear his father's voice again, murmuring something about an antidote.

 _Please. Please._

When Damian opened his eyes, Goliath was gone, replaced by a scaly mess of heads and horns. The creature shrieked as it swept it's tail across the sky, and Damian fell away. He hit the water with a splash and sank into the deep. There was something sliding in the darkness beneath him— a massive, shadowy serpent.

 _You're hallucinating._ Damian threw his arms over his head. _You're fine._ The weight of the water disappeared. He was back at the manor, sitting on his bed with Titus at his feet.

The house was very quiet. For a few minutes, Damian stayed where he was, scratching Titus's ears while he tried to catch his breath— maybe it was over. Maybe he could wake up.

There were footsteps in the hallway. Damian slid off his bed and made for the door, with Titus right behind him— it was dark outside his room, but he thought he saw a figure rounding the corner of the stairwell. Grayson?

They followed him down the hallway. The manor was a mess. There was dust on every painting, the kind of filth that Alfred would never allow. Half the bannister had rotted away, and the front door was hanging off its hinges. A hole in the ceiling shone a spotlight on Grayson's back as he pushed through the threshold, out onto the steps. Damian ran after him.

"Grayson?" The gate was closed, and he wasn't in the yard. Damian turned slowly, checking the treetops, the fence posts, the roof. He paused when he reached the house.

Half the manor was burnt away— a singed shell of black stone underneath the winter sky. Damian could see inside his father's room. His walls were lying in heaps of crumbled brick on the grass.

Titus ran off to sniff at the broken foundation. _You're fine._ Damian wandered across the lawn, following a trail of ash to the edge of the cemetery. _You're fine. It's just the toxin. Just the toxin just the toxin just the—_ He tripped over a fragment of marble and fell face-first into the grass. If it was just a hallucination, nobody could see him, right? He didn't have to pretend.

Damian curled himself into a ball and lay still. He didn't want to get up. Instead, he stared in front of him— withered blades of grass, trees, the tops of the tombstones— and listened to the wind in the willows. A bird, somewhere in the distance. The grind of the generator in the cave?

Behind him, Titus began to growl.

A hand settled on his shoulder, a hand with nails painted , almost sloppily, dark maroon— they looked the way they had years ago, when her toddler painted them for her. She ran her other hand through Damian's hair, humming softly. An old tune. He recognized it from the early days, before his training began.

Then there was a knife in her hand. Damian rolled away, over grass and stone and down, into his own grave. He lay at the bottom, pressed into the broken pieces of his obelisk. His vision blurred— winter sky to dim, electric light and back— then settled. There were footsteps crunching through the tombs. Grayson?

Drake. He stood at the edge of the grave, looking down at Damian. For a moment, he seemed to multiply— half a dozen Drakes walking among the headstones. Damian turned away. Whatever Tim had to say to him, he didn't want to hear it.

But when Drake opened his mouth, the words came out garbled. Damian was confused; he could barely make out some nonsense about dwarves and a dragon. Why would he—? Damian closed his eyes again, hard, and forced them open.

"…rushed out of their great gate, but there was the dragon waiting for them. None escaped that way." He was in the cave, lying in the medical bay. Of course he was. "The river rushed up in steam, and a fog fell on Dale, and— hey. Can you hear me?" Drake pulled his feet off the edge of the bed and closed a leather-bound book. "Damian?"

Damian stared at him. "What are you…?"

"Oh." Drake hefted his novel. "Dick used to read this to me whenever, you know, Scarecrow. Sometimes I can still hear what's going on in the real world, right? So the voice helps. For me, anyway." He pushed his hair out of his face. "Listen, Bruce was here until about a minute ago. I told him I would wait, but I'm starting to realize that was a mistake. I can go get him."

"Don't bother." Damian could find him himself. He tried to sit up, but he couldn't quite manage it— after few seconds of struggling, he turned back to Drake, who was watching him carefully.

"Really?"

"Shut up."

"If you don't want to be left alone, just say it."

"That's not what I meant." He didn't care what Drake did. Obviously. Damian glared up at the ceiling, willing him to leave, but he didn't. He just sat in his chair, flipping through the pages of his book.

"Do you want me to keep reading?" Drake pulled up a dog-eared corner and ran his finger down the text.

"Fine."


End file.
